Robert Harris
You know, you can be really quite subversive in popular fiction, which is capable of taking on big issues of politics, war, the rise and fall of commercial dynasties.
Of all human activities, writing is the one for which it is easiest to find excuses not to begin – the desk’s too big, the desk’s too small, there’s too much noise, there’s too much quiet, it’s too hot, too cold, too early, too late. I had learned over the years to ignore them all, and simply to start.Collection: Writing
It is perseverance, and not genius that takes a man to the top. Rome is full of unrecognized geniuses. Only perseverance enables you to move forward in the world.Collection: Perseverance
History is too important to be left to the historians.Collection: Important
What is leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretense that the decision was based on reasonCollection: Leadership
You can't make sense of the present unless a part of you lives in the past.Collection: Past
Cicero smiled at us. 'The art of life is to deal with problems as they arise, rather than destory one's spirit by worrying about them too far in advance. Especially tonight.Collection: Art
But clever people all make one mistake. They all think everyone else is stupid. And everyone isn't stupid. They just take a bit more time, that's all.Collection: Clever
If one first gives himself to the Lord, all other giving is easy.Collection: Giving
Golf requires only a few simple Rules and Regulations to guide the players in the true nature of its sporting appeal. The spirit of the game is its own referee.Collection: Golf
It is perfectly legitimate to write novels which are essentially prose poems, but in the end, I think, a novel is like a car, and if you buy a car and grow flowers in it, you're forgetting that the car is designed to take you somewhere else.Collection: Flower
You can always spot a fool, for he is a man who will tell you he knows who is going to win an election.Collection: Winning
If long hitting is the thing that causes the spectators to whistle through their teeth in wonderment, why not play tournaments up and down an expansive stadium?Collection: Golf
To be brave, by definition, one has first to be afraid.Collection: Brave
What a heap of ash most political careers amount to, when one really stops to consider them!Collection: Careers
Does a name stick because it suits a man or does the man, unconsciously, evolve into his name?Collection: Men
Another of Cicero's maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity.Collection: Credit
Their souls were contagious. ... Bloodsuckers, spiders and vampires: that was what Lenin called them.Collection: Soul
If you spend too long trying to avoid death, you will be dead in at least one way.Collection: Death
By dawn he had surrendered, gratefully, to the old inertia, the product of always seeing both sides of every question.Collection: Dawn
The natural impulse of men is to follow and whoever has the strongest sense of purpose will always dominate.Collection: Men
I've always just wanted to earn my living by writing. The best thing is to go into my study in the morning and stay there and put words together.Collection: Morning
Egyptologists, skilled in piecing together the papyri of lost civilisations, suddenly discovered that the same talent could be applied to working out the pattern of German radio traffic.Collection: History
A book unwritten is a delightful universe of infinite possibilities. Set down one word, however, and it immediately becomes earthbound. Set down one sentence and it’s halfway to being just like every other bloody book that’s ever been written.Collection: Book
Politics? Boring? Politics is history on the wing! What other sphere of human activity calls forth all that is most noble in men's souls, and all that is most base? Or has such excitement? Or more vividly exposes our strengths and weaknesses? Boring? You might as well say that life itself is boring!Collection: Men
That young man seeks opportunities to test his principles as readily as a drunk picks fights in a bar.Collection: Fighting
In a generation or two, or maybe sooner, young golfers of true sporting instinct will wonder why all this handling of the ball is necessary. It will seem to them that the game is not as good as it might be.Collection: Golf
To say she was my girlfriend was absurd: no one the wrong side of thirty has a girlfriend… I suppose I ought to have realize it’s ominous that forty thousand years of human language had failed to produce a word for our relationship.Collection: Girlfriend
People perish. Books are immortal.Collection: Book
Power brings a man many luxuries, but a clean pair of hands is seldom among them.Collection: Men
But only a fool sails into combat with natureCollection: Fool
A police state is a country run by criminalsCollection: Running
Suicide leaves everyone feeling guilty.Collection: Suicide
[Boxer is] the ultimate tool for the serious pro' that can't afford the time and patience to mess around with lesser products.Collection: Tools
I think it's very, very hard not to go slightly crazy if you're in the top in politics, especially if you're there for a long time.Collection: Crazy
Tape is the archiving champ and has been for decades. Reliable, less expensive than disks and available in large-scale robotic systems that store petabytes.Collection: Tape
I write as well as I can. I’m a journalist at heart, so it’s the story that matters.Collection: Stories